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Proudly entering its 151st year, independent brewer and pub company Wadworth is making huge strides in the South of England. Based in Wiltshire, the company now owns 147 pubs across several counties and the brewery itself recently relocated from the 1885 Northgate Brewery to a stateof-the-art facility on the edge of Devizes. Wadworth’ s move in 2023 to the new Folly Road facility is also expanding brewing flexibility and sustainability initiatives.
The fifth-generation family business was founded by Henry Wadworth and his business partner John Bartholomew – great-great-grandfather of current Managing Director, Toby Bartholomew. Toby joins Food Chain, along with Commercial Director, Adam Russell, to discuss the relocation, new product launches, and how Wadworth plans to overcome current
challenges in the UK hospitality industry with strategic investments.
“ Covid-19 hit us hard in 2020,” Toby begins.“ We had to close pubs which meant we suffered a severe loss of income, and we’ ve since been in recovery mode – but we also had a chance to clean up the business and execute our move to the new site on Folly Road. The brewery is now much more efficient, and it costs a lot less to produce beer. Plus, we have a solid team in place now – it’ s all about getting the right people around you.” He continues, explaining that the previous site became untenable:“ The old brewery was built when we were producing around 130,000 brewer’ s barrels. The cask market across the UK has been in decline since the 1990s and our barrels had fallen to 11,000, so we were basically sat in a huge brewery that was highly inefficient. We needed to move.”
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